Thursday, June 15, 2006

Catching up pt2

Alright, I know you have been waiting with bated breath to hear about my house. It's so compelling.

So....Where was I ?

The morning of the install, we hang out to check out the crew and see some test stain on the floors on the refinished kitchen. We pick the color that we liked. And the lead installer and another dude start having a conversation. They're speaking Spanish, and I pick up a few words, then I look over at my wife and she has a really pissed look on her face....she caught all of it. There are 2 issues it seems.

First, there is not enough wood to do the job, they are about 100SQft off. Second, this isn't the correct floor. Evidently the only way to get natural wood installed is for it to be nailed. DUH. Problem is we have a concrete subfloor, no basement! (why we are looking to move in the first place) When the main contractor came through the first time, he noted the concrete, we talked about it, it was not an issue. Problem is he ordered the cheapest wood he could find to get our business, failing to comprehend it couldn't be installed. Houston, we have a problem.

So we truck ourselves, to the flooring place to find out what they are going to do about it. Sure I'll take a day off, no problem. After moving up to the co-owner we negotiated unfinished prefab floors for the same cost as the natural wood. Funny thing, natural wood is actually cheaper than fabricated, go figure.

Now that most of our worldly possessions are piled up in the garage, we go ahead to the inlaws. Fast forward 4 days and we can come check out our new floors. My wife gets there in the afternoon, and she calls me fuming.

Let me say here something about my wife, don't fuck with her. She will chew you up and spit you out. (Trust me) She is way to smart and way to opinionated to let anything by. There are many times I get caught in 'enforcer' mode when she has laid the groundwork. I'm the good cop, she'll rip your heart out and show it to you. Maybe that's a little strong, but I'm trying to make a point here.

I bolt home to survey the damage, and the first thing I think is "these guys aren't done" but they are... My wife has already been on the phone with these people 400 times by this point, so I fire up the good old boy charm and speak to the owner of the store.

"Hey Jimmy, this is Brian. I wanted to let you know that we've come to the house and the floors look awesome!" (Wife burning holes in my brain with her look) " I was just wondering when the installers were planning to finish the job".(fire off) I won't go over the laundry list of imperfections and instances of half assedness we relayed, but after out conversation we had the installer out in about an hour. The problems were eventually fixed (3 more days) and we were ready for the carpet install......or were we?

More later...yes there's more.

Hey, just in case you were wondering, I officially suck at poker. Just one losing session really, I can handle it, but god do I punish myself sometimes with stupid moves.